“Because each day we wait to begin the work of turning our economy around, more people lose their jobs, their savings and their homes. And if nothing is done, this recession might linger for years. Our economy will lose 5 million more jobs. Unemployment will approach double digits. Our nation will sink deeper into a crisis that, at some point, we may not be able to reverse.”

We’re never going to recover if we don’t get the $50 million for the National Endowment For the Arts

We may never recover if we don’t get $380 million in the Senate bill for the Women, Infants and Children’s program

We may never recover if we don’t get $300 million for grants to combat violence against women

We may never recover if we don’t have $6 billion for university building projects

We may never recover if we don’t have $1.2 billion to provide youth summer jobs, and this bill defines “Youth” to people up to the age of 24. You’ll be paying for those.

We will never recover if we don’t have $2.4 billion for neighborhood stabilization activities.

We may never recover if we don’t have $650 million for digital TV coupons.

We may never recover if we don’t get $150 million for the Smithsonian.

We may never recover if we don’t have $34 million to renovate the Department of Commerce headquarters.

We may never recover if we don’t have $500 million for the improvement projects for the national institute of health facilities.

We may never recover if we don’t have $44 million for repairs to the Department of Agriculture headquarters or

$350 million for agriculture department computers.

We may never recover if we don’t have $88 million to help move the Public Health Service into a new building, not for a new building. To help them move to a new building. We may never survive if we don’t have that $88 million for a moving truck!

We may never survive if we don’t have the money to convert federal auto fleets to hybrids.

This country may never recover if we don’t have a billion dollars for the census bureau.

We may never recover if we don’t have $89 billion for Medicaid

$30 billion for COBRA extensions

$36 billion for expanded unemployment

$20 billion for more food stamps.

We may never recover if we don’t have $850 million for Amtrak, a train that hasn’t turned a profit in 50 years.

America as we know it may never recover if we don’t have $87 million for a polar ice breaking ship, never recover.

We may never recover if we don’t have $1.7 million for the national park system

$55 million for the historic preservation fund.

We may not survive if we don’t have $7.6 million for the rural advancement program

$150 million for the agriculture commodity purposes

$150 million for producers of livestock, farm-raised fish and honeybees.

We may never recover unless we have $160 million for paid volunteers at the Corporation for National and Community Service

If we don’t act now and pass $2 billion for renewable energy research or

$2 billion for clean coal power plants in Illinois or

$6.2 billion for a weatherization assistance program which basically is weatherstrips for underneath your door! We may never survive

If we don’t have $3.5 billion for energy efficiency and conservation block grants or

Anyone who frequents whatthecrap would know that, as a conservative, Obama was not my first choice for president. That said, my voice is not the only one in this nation (and surely, this is a very good thing).

Barack Obama has been elected as the 44th, and first African American, President of the United States of America. No one can deny that this is yet another amazing moment in American history. This election confirms what I have long believed, that America truly is an inclusive nation for all people, and all races. Though we do have faults – it is our propensity to rectify those problems in short order (in this case – hardly a generation), that makes up this nation’s greatness.

I only have the best of wishes for President Obama in the upcoming years. While I may differ with him on his philosophies and policies, we are all Americans, and he is my president. His position as leader of this nation deserves nothing less than my respect. I wish him, as well as Joe Biden, wisdom and grace as they take on the many challenges to come in this thankless, tireless job, which I would never desire. Also, I wish him good luck!

It seems that the final days of the presidential campaign have made Erica Jong and her friends more than a little anxious.

[…]

“The record shows that voting machines in America are rigged.”

“My friends Ken Follett and Susan Cheever are extremely worried. Naomi Wolf calls me every day. Yesterday, Jane Fonda sent me an email to tell me that she cried all night and can’t cure her ailing back for all the stress that has reduces her to a bundle of nerves.”

“My back is also suffering from spasms, so much so that I had to see an acupuncturist and get prescriptions for Valium.”

“After having stolen the last two elections, the Republican Mafia…”

“If Obama loses it will spark the second American Civil War. Blood will run in the streets, believe me. And it’s not a coincidence that President Bush recalled soldiers from Iraq for Dick Cheney to lead against American citizens in the streets.”

“Bush has transformed America into a police state, from torture to the imprisonment of reporters, to the Patriot Act.”

Please. That’s so 1930’s Benito-style. It’s time Live in the Now….ya Dig?

Here in America, we settle intellectual disputes by writing books and papers, holding public debates, and through ballot boxes – not violence. That’s what separates an advanced western civilization from barbarism.

Lay some of that modern-day Amero-ganja in your Jong-Bong and smoke it.

If you believe that America’s primary mission in the world is to be loved, then that leads to the following foreign-policy choices:

Redistribute American wealth to other countries on a massive scale without preconditions

Withdraw our military presence from the world, including our defense of global trading routes

End support for Israel

The mission to spread freedom and liberty, which has been our primary focus for at least the last sixty years, does not bring immediate popularity. It challenges the entrenched interests of oppressive ruling classes, and it irritates those who would rather turn a blind eye to tyranny in order to make a short-term profit from it. The reward for freeing millions and defeating tyrants is not in the immediate gratification of self-indulgent “love”, but in the security of reducing oppression and allowing people to rule themselves and make their own decisions — which has inevitably led to safer, less hostile nations.